Cable television growth has come from the development of various programming categories and by the technologies which made the delivery of these programs possible. Cable first brought distant TV signals to areas where there was little or no off-air reception. This applies to distant signals and weak signal areas where outdoor antennas are mandatory. The next category to bring major growth to cable was the advent of premium pay services, which became available after the development of reasonable cost satellite delivery systems. After satellite delivery was accepted and became less costly, super stations and cable networks formed another category of programming that has become customary and are often termed "extended basic" services. Franchising and local politics has created a generally unprofitable but necessary category called "local origination". Recently, addressable technology and aggressive marketing have caused "pay-per-view" programming to form another category of programming.
FM (audio) broadcasting over cable has never achieved significant success for two technological reasons: signal quality is poor and there has been no way to collect revenue or control the access to the service.
New digital techniques for the reproduction of sound provide performance that is far superior to analog techniques which have been used in the past. An example of high fidelity sound reproduction using digital techniques can be found in the compact disc technology which has recently enjoyed tremendous success as an alternative to phonograph records and tapes. Digital recording and playback techniques provide reproduction of music that is extremely realistic and free from background noise and distortions which have plagued other high fidelity sound reproduction systems currently in wide scale use.
Commonly owned, U.S Pat. No. 4,821,097, entitled "Apparatus and Method for Providing Digital Audio on the Sound Carrier of a Standard Television Signal", and incorporated herein by reference, discloses a system wherein the FM audio portion of a standard television signal in the TV band is replaced with digital audio. Three digital audio channels are time division multiplexed on the sound carrier, using combined multiphase and AM modulation. The audio signals are digitized using adaptive delta modulation techniques. Video vertical and horizontal framing, as well as the audio carrier phase reference, audio data bit time and frame reference, and various control data is carried using AM modulation. The digital audio information is carried using multiphase modulation. The composite data stream may be serially encrypted to provide security and prevent unauthorized reproduction of the video and/or audio portions of the television signal.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,684,981, entitled "Digital Terminal Address Transmitting for CATV", discloses producing digital signals of up to four different modes for transmission over an unused television channel in an existing cable television transmission line. High quality audio signals may be transmitted and/or data channels or monaural audio signals, all of which may be transmitted over the single cable television transmission line. Cable television channels have approximately a 6 MHz bandwidth, and are transmitted in the TV band which ranges in frequency from 50 MHz (channel 2) to 550 MHz (channel 50).
Any distribution system which transmits digital audio data (such as a cable television system) must be such that the transmitted audio signal does not interfere with millions of radio sets already in existence which use conventional analog sound circuits. Thus, such things as the channel width of 400 kilohertz (KHz) for each channel within the FM broadcast band should not be changed, subject to narrow tolerances.